I'm having trouble with how serious people take this game.
I mean, it's not like people would call me on my cell, because, I dunno, a guildmate in WoW was at Undercity auction house or something. It was fine in SOA, where actions had consequences, but here it's just ridiculous how serious people take everything.

Comparing this to an auction house is underselling it by a fair bit. If the Salamanders succeed, they'll kill two race leaders, landing them a huge amount of funds for gearing up for their next attempt on the world tree, and start a war between those two races leaving them unable to interfere with the Salamanders next attempt, or beat the Salamanders to it. That's a pretty big shift in the balance of power and in game politics in the game.